Getting Their Trump On: More Toxic Trickle-Down

James Means killed by William Pulliam

With facts still emerging about 62-year-old William Ronald Pulliam's arrest for shooting 15-year-old James Harvey Means twice in the stomach last Monday with a .380 caliber handgun, it's hard to say whether this latest example of physical violence against a young man of color is directly tied to the divisive rhetoric of the president-elect.

But given that Pulliam told cops "Another piece of trash off the street." after the arrest, I'm guessing he didn't  vote for Hillary.


Now no offense to any white males who may be reading this (some of you are good friends of mine) but it's Saturday November 26th as I write this, so it's only been fifteen days since a white male Trump supporter aired his personal grievances and political views against a black man minding his own business in a public place.

Remember U.S. Army veteran Ernest Walker being unfairly interrogated about his military service record in a Chili's Grill and Bar in Cedar Hill, Texas on Veterans Day by an old guy in a Trump t-shirt and the manager of the establishment two weeks ago?

Well as Republican icon Ronald Reagan once famously noted, "Here we go again."

Yet another Trump supporter is making headlines for "getting his Trump on" in a place of business, only this time it was targeted against women in the confines of a Delta Airlines flight en route from Atlanta, Georgia to Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Trump supporter rants on Delta flight

Seriously, the election took place over three weeks ago; what is it with Trump supporters in public places?

Now interestingly, like the Chili's incident in Texas, this story first started blowing up on social media after a passenger on the flight named Emma Baum used her cell phone or iPad/Kindle to take a brief video of a Trump supporter in a black t-shirt and a white baseball hat wandering the aisle of a the packed flight ranting about Trump.

Have you seen this video that's been viewed almost 2 million times already?

The as-yet unnamed man is just ranting about Trump to the entire plane and in an incredible display of misogyny, he actually has the gall to call the female passengers, "Hillary bitches".

According to an article posted on Buzzfeed.com yesterday afternoon that quoted Emma Baum's Facebook page, the stewardesses on the Delta flight eventually took the Trump supporter aside for fifteen minutes where my guess is he was finally warned about his behavior.

But how does someone just get up mid-flight and start ranting openly like that without a quicker response from the Delta flight crew?

As a number of people observed on Twitter last night, had that guy been a man with dark skin and a turban on they would have made an emergency landing.

Or worse.

Faisal & Nazia Ali kicked off Delta
flight for "sweating" and texting

In fact, just last August Faisal and Nazia Ali, a Muslim couple who'd just celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary in Paris, were seated on a Delta flight back to Cincinnati, Ohio when one of the Delta employees asked them to exit the plane.

One of the Delta employees claimed that Faisal had been seen "sweating" and allegedly tried to hide his cell phone when the Delta employee walked by; the plane had been sitting on the tarmac for 45 minutes in August, I would have been sweating too.


Faisal had actually been texting his mother to tell her when to pick them up at the airport, but even after being questioned by a French police officer who found no reason to detain them, the captain of the Delta flight wouldn't let them back on based on the employee's unjustified suspicions.

But I guess some guy standing in the middle of a Delta flight "getting his Trump on" by ranting at random passengers and insulting women is okay with Delta?

Seems like Delta's cautionary screening procedures depend on what you look like.

Funny how the remarkably thin-skinned Trump blows a gasket on his Twitter account if someone says something he doesn't like, but when his supporters act like assholes to innocent strangers minding their own business in public in Trump's name?

Radio silence.

Guess this is the kind of Trickle-Down Theory we can expect from now on, only it's not imaginary money trickling down from the "top"; it's toxic divisiveness and bigotry.